The Gust-DEMO Fall 2012 Scholarship

Following the huge success of the Gust-DEMO scholarship earlier this year, Gust and DEMO have teamed up again to offer Gust start-ups a full scholarship opportunity for DEMO Fall 2012. The recipient of the Gust-DEMO Scholarship will have a chance to launch their product to some of the most innovative people in the world. During the two-day conference, DEMO provides an environment for companies to secure venture funding, establish critical relationships, influence early adopters, and meet with top tier press. The deadline to apply for the full scholarship is August 17, 2012.

SCHOLARSHIP

The Gust-DEMO scholarship gives you and your company the chance to launch in front of a world-renown audience of leading investors, top enterprise and consumer technology press, and big company strategists. You and seventy of the world’s most carefully scrutinized emerging companies will debut your product in Santa Clara, among the best and the brightest in Silicon Valley. Your all-access pass included in the scholarship ensures that you will receive all the support and resources to help you succeed at the conference and after on demo.com.

DEMO Fall 2012 takes place October 1-3, 2012 in Santa Clara, CA.

HOW TO APPLY

Simply complete the free application on Gust to apply for the scholarship. As part of your application, you will create your startup profile on Gust, which you can return to in the future to manage all of your investor relations needs. Fields marked required must be completed in order to be eligible. Incomplete applications will be disqualified without any consideration of partial information received.

ELIGIBILITY

There is only one common denominator among companies chosen to present at DEMO: excellence. To be eligible to launch on the DEMO stage, and for the Gust-DEMO Scholarship, your product must:

Solve a commercial problem

Make an impact or change the marketplace into which it is introduced, or create a new market

Have a business plan and a management team capable of delivering the product to market

Make its public debut at the DEMO conference

Products that are not eligible include:

Products currently in public distribution, either as a launched product or as a highly publicized beta test

Written by Ilana Grossman

Ilana Grossman

Ilana was the CMO of Gust with experience at Digitas and Organic. There, she led the development and implementation of several CRM and digital campaigns for clients such as Bank of America, Sanofi-Aventis, Johnson & Johnson, and Astra Zeneca.

In some ways, it is now difficult to imagine a world without accelerators. Many of the globe’s most well-known and disruptive startups were propelled from the hallways of legendary accelerators such as Y Combinator, TechStars, and 500 Startups. AirBnb, Dropbox, Zenefits, Stripe, DigitalOcean, Heroku, Optimizely, Intercom, Reddit, and hundreds of other startup success stories were all briskly brought to life

For three out of four quarters in 2015, New York City’s tech ecosystem has led with more startup funding requests than any other region in the country, including California’s long reigning Silicon Valley. After a dip in Q3, New York rebounded in Q4 claiming nearly 20% of every funding application around the country. California ranked second with 17.8% of total

In Q3 the global startup ecosystem continued to thrive, with 25% growth over the same quarter last year and up 18% from last quarter, as the innovation economy expands around the world. Quarterly data from Gust, the online platform for the global angel investment industry, reveals that while incumbent leaders show no sign of slowing down, new industries and areas

2015 is shaping up to be a strong year for the startup and early stage investor ecosystem. Total startup funding applications are up across the globe and in multiple sectors, especially in the United States where the surging New York City tech industry is leading a nationwide growth in new startups.